


gaze upon my bones

by crackthesky



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Fate & Destiny, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Death, Oracles, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:27:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24248020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crackthesky/pseuds/crackthesky
Summary: knowing fate does not save you from it.
Relationships: Renfri | Shrike/Reader
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	gaze upon my bones

People so rarely want the truth of fate.

You learn to read your patrons early, divine their desires from the lilt of their lips (pulled pink between their teeth, curved quiet around a secret, laugh lines carved around an unsmiling mouth) and the way their hands flutter like moths against the silk of your cushions. In the beginning, they come to you relentlessly, mindlessly, a river destined to spill into your ocean, to mingle with the salt of you. They pour into your endless reservoir and they never want the truth of it. 

It is a hard lesson to learn, to swallow down the truth, but you never forget the prick of the mother’s blade against the soft curve of your belly and the way her sobs burned bright against your ear. When you were a child, pressing your ear against a seashell gave you the music of the ocean. If you returned to the coast now, you think, the shell would echo with her wails instead. 

They do not want the truth, and so you no longer give it to them.

Instead, you carry their fates somewhere deep inside. You have been to war a thousand times, all without even knowing how to swing a sword. Have felt a man’s skull split beneath your blade, felt the pulse of it resonate up into your arm. Cradled a child as they sweat out a fever, held them for hours after they went limp in your arms. The first time you’d orgasmed, it had paled in comparison to the one you’d lived through the woman with hair that cascaded like fire against her freckled shoulders. The first time you’d loved, it hadn’t been as ardently as the man with night-sky eyes, a vast dark gaze full of the tenderness of the guiding stars. 

_A trickster god_ , you said to your mother, years ago now. Hundreds of other's not-yet lifetimes ago. _Of all the gods you could choose._

She hadn’t known the trick would weigh heavy on you and not her, but that is the way of the gods. 

(In your seventeenth summer, you give yourself to a forest goddess, let her priestesses drape you with ivy and fiddleheads still tightly furled. You trace a finger over the curved stem of the fiddlehead and turn your face towards the forest canopy, letting the dappled sunlight shimmer over your skin. It feels like a blessing.

Not three evenings later, you dream.

There are teeth shining in the darkness, slick white against velvet night, each tooth sharp with something unearthly, a knife’s blade of divinity. They smile terribly, and you know what it is to be small. 

_Very well_ , the teeth rumble, dark amusement apparent in the rockslide click-clack of them. _I suppose you are owed a trick of your own._

You wake with winter spiraling down your spine, the chill spreading cool across your skin despite summer’s heated kiss. The gooseflesh prickles like little thorns, the sensation rolling over you like a shroud.

You do not know if it was just a dream, and you do not want to know.

If the trickster god has let go of you, he has not taken back your sight, the way lives unspool over little flickers of smoke with you a captive audience to their play, and that is the cruelest trick of all.)

There is inherent trickery in fate, you know, and most of your patrons’ fates are blurred at the edges, still intangible, still changeable. 

Not Renfri’s.

She comes to the temple, hidden deep in the shadows of the woods, and you are entranced. 

She is incandescent with youth, supple and wild. She reminds you of a waning moon. Aglow with vigor, the type of beauty that makes you want to raise your face to her and bathe in her light. But at her edges, a shadow that consumes, that edges closer to the heart of her. 

She settles at the edge of the cushion across from you. Her legs are long, lean things, slender but heavy with muscle, and something in you aches to touch. 

There is a small streak of dirt smeared across her graceful neck. Your sisters had offered her a bath, hands twisting nervously in their sleeves, and she had laughed, a low, clear noise. 

“Some things we can’t be cleaned of,” she’d said. “I would see the oracle first.”

And so she came to you.

She slings her arm over her knee. In the sunlight, her eyes are the color of a newborn fawn, tawny brown and beautiful, but she has none of the fawn’s timidity. 

“I’d thought of oracles as old,” Renfri says.

You quirk a brow. “Come back in several decades and I will be.”

Her pink lips lift at the corners with something sweetly sly. “I’d also thought them dull, so you’ve proved me wrong twice over.”

You hum something soft. 

Renfri considers you, and you can feel her trying to split you at the seams, to open you to her curiosities. 

“Do you truly know what is fated?” she asks softly, and for the briefest moment, she is delicate. Her leather armor, worn and nicked where blades have floated too close, seems too big on her. 

_More than I wish_ , you think. “Only time can answer that,” you say instead. “Would you like to know?”

She nods, and there is the snarl of a feral thing tucked between her teeth. The wild uncurls in her, that dark edge of the moon spreading across her, seeping like a shadow just beneath her skin. 

You contemplate the small scars scattered like stars across her knuckles, the fine delicacy of the scar tissue, and the hard peaks of her knuckles beneath. “Think of what fate you want to know,” you say. “You may speak it aloud, if that pleases you, but hold it in your mind.”

Most close their eyes to bring their uncertainty out of the depths of themselves.

Not Renfri.

She meets your gaze, her hard eyes framed by the soft sweep of her chestnut waves, and though her face is blank stone, you can sense the bared teeth. She is all coiled snake, sleekly muscled and ready to strike. 

“Hold out your hand.”

Renfri extends her hand. Her fingers are fine-boned, sleek and slender, but her calluses scrape against your skin as you turn her hand over. Her scars are small hills, and you trace the pad of your thumb over the raised skin without thought.

You have only a moment to register the warmth of her skin against your questing fingertips, and then her fate sweeps you away.

And it is terrible.

Blood swallows you like a tide, drags you deeper into a wash of violence that makes you tremble. Bellies burst and split open against the cruel drive of a spike; symphonies of cracking bones. The heavy thud of a sword pushing through a skull. The smell of copper and rot and death. An empty space inside, a void hungry for control, for taking back what is yours. 

And then, for the briefest breath, for a lightning strike of a moment: your own lips, curling up into something fond. A touch so light it reminds of the sun, intangible but felt anyway. The woody, pungent scent of thyme mellowed by soft, sweet clover, soap and skin perfumed by the temple’s lush cloverbeds. 

Then there is laughter, a comfort of familiar men’s low voices flashing by too quick for words. Blood blossoms and fades and rage so deep it winds up your throat like vines until you are choking on the breadth of it and then - 

Snowy hair gone silver with grime. A voice like a landslide. Warmth and wonder, heat in the hallowed embrace of the woods. Two swords, silver and steel, and the bite of a blade at your throat. Pain spreading like a disease. A gaping maw of hunger never filled. 

Renfri’s death pulls you out of her fate. You pick carefully at the threads of her still wound around the needle of your mind, tease them out before they can be woven into you. It takes more concentration than usual.

The breath you take is deep and slow; it washes the copper stink of blood out from your nose. “Do you want to know your fate?” you ask Renfri.

She considers you. She has eyes like the forest, deep brown and full of life. “No,” Renfri says. “Not yet.”

Your hand is still on hers, but she does not move. 

You are the one who pulls back.

Later, once Renfri rejoins her men, Maya brings you a skein of water. She hums quietly as you drink deeply. “What did you see?” she asks. “It is not like you to be so shaken.”

You wipe the water from your lips. “Me,” you say. “I saw me.”

Maya cups your cheek. Her dark eyes are soft. They have the sorrow of the winter forest in them, bleakly quiet. She runs her thumb across your cheekbone, her touch feather light. “Knowing fate is a dangerous thing,” she murmurs.

You wrap your hand around her wrist, let your fingers play across the delicacy of her skin. She smiles, slow and sweet, and pulls away gently.  
Maya settles next to you, her skirt flaring like an opening bloom. She rests her head against your shoulder and hums quietly.

The two of you stay like that for a long, long time.

* * *

Renfri returns a scant month later. 

She is wild with delight, all bared teeth and feral joy. There is a cut healing on her collarbone; the edges of it going pink with the promise of a scar. Her chestnut hair is mussed by the wind. It wisps around her face like smoke. 

She is achingly beautiful. 

Maya must tell her where to go, for she finds you sprawled in the cloverbed behind the temple. She hunkers down next to you in one fluid motion. You blink up at her.

“Renfri?”

She smiles. “Oracle. You remember me.” 

_How could I not_ , you don’t say. Instead, you tell her your name and say: “You don’t need to call me oracle now.”

You push to your elbows as Renfri plops down into the clovers with you. She’s feline in her grace, stretches her lithe form in the sunlight, tilting her face up towards the light. You think of her grace as she prowls around the broad man in the market square. 

“Would you like to know your fate?” you ask. It feels an odd thing, to ask it here, in the warmth of the sun with the clovers brushing against your skin, the sweet scent of them catching in the breeze.

“Why do you ask that?” Renfri says. She peers at you, shading her eyes from the sun, the deep mahogany of them almost black in the shadows. 

“What?”

She sighs. “Why do you ask if I’d like to know my fate, instead of just telling?”

You shift. “People don’t always understand what it means,” you tell her. “Sometimes knowing the end makes you lose the present.”

Renfri hums. “I don’t think I could lose the present,” she says softly. “Not until I’ve run my blade through Stregobor’s belly.” 

“You’d be surprised.”

“You didn’t ask.”

“About what?”

“Stregobor.”

You sigh. “If you wanted to tell me, you would.”

“You can say it, you know,” Renfri tells you. She’s watching you carefully, those dark eyes half-wild. “You know the stories, even out here.”

“Do you want me to call you Shrike?” you ask.

She tilts her head. The waves of her hair spill against the shore of her shoulders. “No,” she says quietly. “I don’t think I do.”

“Alright,” you say.

You fade into silence, listening to the creaking lullaby of the forest. Renfri lies down next to you, her dark hair stark against the verdant green of the clovers. She tugs at them with nimble fingers. The snap of their stems sharpens their scent as it floats sweet around you. 

Eventually, she tells you about Stregobor. 

Eventually, you nudge closer to curl up by her side.

Eventually, she leaves, and you are left with nothing but the lingering scent of her - warm cloves and sword oil, and just beneath it, the copper tang of blood - and the choking feeling of a sob caught in your throat.

* * *

“Would you want to know your own fate?”

“No,” you tell Renfri as you separate a wild cherry from its stem. You split the flesh of it between your fingers and pry the stone free. The pit plinks into the wooden bowl, the sound of it oddly musical. Maya had pulled you both into the kitchen to help her when Renfri first arrived. It hadn’t taken her long to disappear, but you can still feel her warning gaze prickling against your skin.

Renfri steals the cherry from you with nimble fingers and pops it into her mouth. The carmine juice of it stains her pink lips dark. You try not to stare.

“Why not?” she asks.

It takes a moment to understand what she’s asking about. You pull your gaze away from the dark sweep of her eyelashes against her pale skin. 

“Sometimes you can know too much,” you tell her.

Renfri hums. She cuts off a sliver of a nearby apple with a small dagger, holds it to your lips. You roll your eyes at her but pull the crisp slice from her blade, let the fruit’s flesh crunch under your teeth, sour and sweet in the same breath. She pulls back and sucks the juice from her fingers. 

Heat rises to your cheeks.

You busy yourself with the wild cherries, breaking them down with the easy precision of constant work. The smell of them fills the air. “Besides,” you say absently, working at a particularly stubborn pit, “it’s hard enough already, waiting for what I’ve seen come to pass.”

Renfri pauses. “You’ve seen yourself in other’s fates?”

“Ah,” you say. “Yes.”

“Many of them?”

“No,” you say carefully. “Just one.”

“Oh,” Renfri says, and then she is working at the apple again, peeling its skin off in a long, curling ribbon. She’s quiet, then, and she stays quiet. During the mid-day dinner, with Maya and the rest of the table sharing the low benches at the long table, she seems to find her chatter again. 

She leaves the same night. Her men are itching to move on, and from what low chatter carries to you, they’ve caught wind of Stregobor for the first time since he fled Angren. The sun is just gaining the golden hue of the late afternoon when she saddles her horse. Her men start ahead of her as she dallies at the door of the temple.

“Stay safe,” you tell her, even though you know that in the end, she cannot. 

Renfri nods, and the sun catches in her chestnut hair, paints it bright and dark all at once. “The fate you saw yourself in,” she says quietly. 

_Don’t_ , you want to say. _Please_.

“Yes?” you ask.

“It was mine, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” you say, and your ribs crack under the admission.

“I knew it,” Renfri breathes, and she tastes of cherry juice and a hint of spice bread. She kisses you again, fervent, her callused hands rough against your cheeks, and you open to her. Renfri softens against you. She tastes of cherry juice and something tenderly sweet and fate - fate has not prepared you for this. 

She pulls away from you and rests her forehead against yours. You breathe in her air and push it back out as your own. Her eyes are mahogany in the afternoon light, tinted darker still by want. 

“I have to go,” she says.

“I know.”

“Soon,” Renfri says. “I’ll be back soon.”

You push into her again, catch her lips with yours. She pulls you close, one hand dropping low on your waist, her fingers dipping under the gap between your bodice and your skirt. She is so warm against you. 

Renfri rides off into the distance. There is a moment where she blocks out the sun, and it gleams at the edges of her, crowning her with light seeping around her shadowed edges. An eclipse all your own.

 _Please_ , you think that night, as you tend to one of the patches of your goddess’s favored ferns. _Let me be wrong, just once._

* * *

You trace a finger across the scar just beneath Renfri’s left breast, a little sickle moon of healed flesh. Your touch is feather light.

Renfri laughs and catches your hand. She brings it to her lips, presses a kiss to the pads of your fingers. Her lips are swollen and red and hot beneath your touch. You echo her with a kiss against the lean muscle of her belly. 

“What are you thinking of?” she asks softly.

“Nothing and everything,” you say. She had come to the temple wearing a leather vest with a familiar pattern. You could not strip her of it fast enough.

“Come now, oracle,” Renfri chides. “Tell me.”

“It’s nothing,” you say.

You crawl up and kiss her red, red lips. She tastes of cherry juice and campfire smoke. It’s a lazy, sweet kiss. She cups the nape of your neck and urges you against her. Renfri touches you with a reverence you’d never expected, her rough hands soft against your skin. 

Her hair is dark against your linens, the waves of it spread wide against your thin pillow. She glitters with delight, but there is still something feral tucked into her lips. She kisses you like a wild thing, sometimes, her deep brown eyes hazed until they are almost black, a velvet night to embrace you. You curl into her side and stroke your fingers over her skin.

The two of you doze until Renfri murmurs: “Would you tell me my fate, if I asked?”

You think of blood, and how the sound of two swords scraping against each other reminds you of a mourning knell. You think of Renfri’s teeth nipping against your neck like little knives, and her form molded soft against yours. You press your face into her neck and she smells of thyme, wood and earth, your soap still lingering on her skin. 

She leaves tonight. The two of you are hoarding every moment you can have, winding sinuous around time like a dragon guarding its treasure. 

“Do you want to know it?” you ask, tasting the salt of her skin on your lips.

Renfri traces the curve of your hip with a long finger. You pull back enough to peek up at her, to see the way the fan of her lashes flutter over her skin. She tips your chin up until you meet her eyes.

“No,” she says. Her eyes glimmer and gleam like torchlight.

You think some quiet part of her already knows.

You press a kiss against the blade of her collarbone. “Then I won’t,” you say.

The two of you stay entwined until Renfri has to leave. The Arc Coast is not small, and there are many towns where Stregobor may be hiding, though there are whispers that he is in a sorcerer’s tower in one of the larger towns. 

Renfri’s goodbye kisses are always her hungriest ones. 

She casts a long shadow as she and her men ride off. It glows around the edges, and you think again of an eclipse.

Not three evenings later, you dream.

There are teeth shining in the darkness. Each tooth is sharp with power, all honed pale bone gleaming in the velvet cradle of the deep, deep night. They are ghastly things, otherworldly, piercing through the veil. They do not smile, but you still feel small. 

_It is a cruel trick, fate_ , the teeth say, all rumbling thunder crackling just overhead, splitting the sky with sound. _The order of it brings comfort, but the knowing - the knowing is pain. I am sorry, child of mine._

When you wake, you are already crying.

* * *

Years later, you step into a tavern and see a witcher with white, white hair tucked away at a table in the back. His eyes glow sun-gold, and he is as handsome as you remember. 

You order a tankard of ale. Those amber eyes flicker towards you as you approach. His face is stone, but his eyes are a warning all their own. 

“Thank you,” you say to Geralt of Rivia. “For trying.”

The tankard makes a heavy noise against the pitted wood of the table.

From the deep grunt, he doesn’t understand, but you don’t need him to. You still remember the look on his face as he skimmed Renfri’s own blade against the delicate skin of her neck. The desolation of it, the crack in the very foundation of him. You still know the touch of his arm against your back, how he cradled her as she fell. 

You had always known you were going to lose her. 

Knowing fate does not save you from it.

**Author's Note:**

> anyway i was minding my own business today and this hit me like lightning and i guess i kinda dropped everything to write it?
> 
> me: takes the gods and oracles of the witcher and essentially throws it all away
> 
> i hope this doesn't butcher renfri too badly but i just had to do it!
> 
> title is from rafferty's 'mausoleum'


End file.
